Vandals on Friday damaged a fuel pipeline at Alakija, Festac Town in Lagos, even as a team of fire fighters battled to extinguish a fire which gutted the Folawiyo Depot in Apapa, Lagos.
The vandals, who struck at about 2am on Friday, were however, unlucky as a team of personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps mobilised to the scene and prevented them from loading their trucks. The Commandant, Lagos Command of the NSCDC, Mr. Mohammed Lawan, told our correspondent at the scene of the broken pipeline that the personnel would maintain a 24-hour surveillance on fuel pipelines across the state.
The line was eventually clamped around 7am by the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
Meanwhile, officials of the Department of Petroleum Resources blamed the outbreak of fire at the Folawiyo Depot on the carelessness of a driver who started his engine while a spill was being cleaned. According to the DPR, whose team was at the scene of the incident, the fire, which started about 8.30pm on Thursday, was eventually put out by 1am on Friday. It left about 50 per cent of the depot�s loading gantry totally burnt.
According to the DPR, �It was a case of unruly truck driver They loaded some trucks and there was a spill from one of them. They usually use foam to contain the spill, but one of them started his engine while they were still cleaning the spill and there was a spark, and that was it.�
Although, there has been no official comment from the management of the Folawiyo Depot, who also refused to allow journalists into the depot, investigations revealed that some seven trucks laden with petrol and diesel were burnt in the process.